


Search for the Face of Love

by temporalDecay



Series: a distrait life of mistakes [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Gills, Hermaphroditic Trolls, M/M, Original Character(s), Tentabulges, piercings in places there shouldn't be, sex for the sake of the imperial drones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 08:47:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporalDecay/pseuds/temporalDecay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No SGRUB AU, post successful coup, following Eridan Ampora's attempts to make up for being "The Greatest Douchecanoe In The Galaxy" as he finds himself stuck with a bunch of midbloods and fighting to survive such odds as "Oh Shit, It's Drone Season And I Ain't Got Neither A Matesprit Nor A Kismesis". Featuring Karkat "Fix Your Fucking Shit Before I Fix It For You" Vantas reprising his role of the scariest motherfucker this side of the galaxy. </p><p>Also gills, piercings, and piercings in gills. Also, also sex.</p><p> </p><p>  <b>Additional warnings for sex under the influence (drunk) as well as consent issues given that IMPERIAL DRONES.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Search for the Face of Love

“And what are _you_ doing here?” 

You ignore the snide remark, busying yourself by methodically deleting every contact from trollian. The recuperacoons are small and stacked, one on top of the other, into hollows in the walls, with small metal steps leading into them. Yours is up in the corner, and you wish it weren’t because even though there’s a sheet of steel between the bottom of it and the bunk below, you’ll now have day terrors about whoever sleeps under you stabbing you in your sleep. You’re sitting on the edge, half hanging off the steps, husktop balanced on your knees and pretending really hard every eye in the block isn’t fixed on you. 

“Yeah, you, the seadweller,” the same voice echoes again, louder this time. “The hell is someone like you doing here?” 

You take a deep breath, picturing Karkat’s face in your mind to keep your temper in check, and finally look at the cluster of trolls by the door: two greens and three teals, all of them giving you identical looks of suspicion. Part of you wonders if they recognize you, even though you didn’t really play that big of a role in the rebellion to be as well-known as Karkat or Sollux or everyone else in your circle of friends. Ex-friends. The rest of you is annoyed at the question, because what the fuck do they think you’re doing here? It sure as hell isn’t looking for company. 

“Until you interrupted me? Reading,” you say, trying to smooth over your accent in an effort to sound as neutral as possible. “If you mean in the more general sense? I suppose the same as you, to learn how to be a ship’s administrator.” 

You are inordinately proud of yourself for not gagging over that. You’re fucking royalty, that’s what you are. Scion of one of the purest violet bloodlines, with an impeccable pedigree. You should be studying to join the higher ranks of the army, become an admiral or something like that, like you always knew you would. But you fucked that up. You fucked everything up because that’s what you’re good for, fucking shit up. And now this is all you have, the very last chance you have to not end up thrown out of the airlock of the ship. You rub your fingers, feeling the dips where your rings used to be. You gave those to Karkat, like a tangible representation of your most solemn promise to not fuck this up. Sometimes, when you’re feeling like the entire world is against you – which is, like, every single moment of every single night – you wish you had given him something else. Your fingers are thin and spidery without the gold adorning them, almost skeletal. Most of you, really, looks rather skeletal, after half a season languishing in a prison block, waiting to be executed. You suppose this is better than being dead. Marginally. 

“Is that so?” You realize the one speaking is, surprisingly, a greenblood. But then you realize her boldness comes from the indigo weaved into her vest. A highblood quadrant would embolden someone like that. Plus, the first waves of the revolution have made most of the lower castes braver. It’s hard to enforce the changes Feferi – you still call her Feferi in your head, even if she revoked you use of her hatchname, because she’ll never _not_ be Feferi for you – has proposed, even if most of the fleet summarily decided their survival chances were better under the new Empress’ rule than against it. “Sure hope you’re not expecting us to give you special treatment, or anything.” 

You make a point to roll your eyes so they can see it, and then turn back to your husktop and the thorough cleaning of your social life. You have no one. You’re no one. 

So who the fuck cares. 

  


* * *

  


“…can I see them?” 

Agness is the first of the group to seek you out. You guess she’s alright, for a tealblood. They’re all sort of alright, really, but she might actually be really alright, all things considered. A perigee and a half in, you’re already used to the routine in your little block. Wake up when the ship’s alarms howl announcing the shift change, get in line to take a shower, get yelled at for taking too long, eat some gruel, sit through twelve hours of schoolfeeding and lectures, eat more gruel, then sit around in either the library or the small common block connecting your block with the other six containing fellow admin students and work your way through mountains of homework while ignoring the world, then eat more gruel, then go back to your block to sleep, just as the ship’s alarms howls again. It’s a boring, unexciting routine and you blame it as to why you’ve learned your blockmates’ names, routines and personalities. 

You still feel a little caged in, that the block is too small to house six trolls. You’ve carefully avoided thinking about your hive, however, or how you could easily fit at least three of the seven blocks into your respiteblock alone. You try not to think about anything before landing your ass here, because then you’ll get angry and the very last thing you want to do is get angry. You’ll fuck this up, if you get angry. So whenever shit starts getting annoying, you rub your thumbs against your ringless knuckles and picture Karkat’s face and remind yourself you deserve this. 

“See what?” You ask absently, eyes slowly rolling over the words of your manual and refusing to look up and find Agness sprawled next to you, doing her own homework. 

“You know,” she says, a touch uncertain, “your gills.” 

You suppose you’re a weird novelty, for trolls around you. Most of them had never even met a seadweller before joining the fleet and none of them in person. The notion just makes you want to grind your teeth because of course they hadn’t, seadwellers are the highest, rarest caste. They don’t belong mingling with midblood landdwellers. 

“No,” you say, shuffling so the husktop is a little closer to your face. 

“Blah,” she sighs, and you can almost hear her rolling her eyes at you, “you’re so boring, Ampora.” 

You snort and refuse to say anything else. 

  


* * *

  


At the end of your first term, you are proud to receive your grades and even prouder to have scored among the highest of each class. You’re a highblood cheated out of his hatchright, but fuck if you won’t prove to everyone you’re better than them. Oddly enough, they don’t seem all that bothered by it, which mystifies you a little. They invite you along to go drinking and celebrate not getting kicked out of the program, like a third of the group has been. Kicked out is the nice way to say culled, which you suppose means Feferi’s revolutionary ideas haven’t all been put in place yet. It’d make sense they haven’t though. She can’t change thousands of sweeps of tradition in such a short time. You wonder if by the time your classmates are dead, there will be a greater difference in how things are run. 

And then, while you’re preparing to enjoy at least three weeks free of lectures or having to get out of your tiny recuperacoon at all, you are reminded of another change Feferi hasn’t made which is precisely why you have three weeks free in the first place. The entire ship is expected to cough up pails for the Imperial Drones by the end of the break, and those who don’t can be expected to be “kicked out” as well. Before you can start properly panicking about it or gather enough courage to swallow your pride and ask Karkat to bail you out of it, despite the fact you haven’t been in contact with him at all since he dropped you on your ass here, Agness comes talk to you. 

“Eridan?” 

You look at her and take a moment to stare, because you definitely do not remember her having that much metal in her face before. You blink a little dumbly, somewhat fascinated by the rings and the studs on her ears and her eyebrows and her nose and her lips. 

“Yeah?” 

“Got a matesprit and a kismesis?” You splutter a little at the question, and then glare at her when she chuckles. “Gonna take that as a no, come sit with us will you?” 

“Why?” You narrow your eyes suspiciously, as ‘us’ is apparently Russel, one of the greenbloods from your block, and Worley, a tealblood from a different block. 

“Because we don’t either and we’re sorting out how to fix it, c’mon.” 

Bewildered, you go. You’re not really sure what she’s talking about, but all you can think of is fixing this without having to go crawling back to ask for Karkat’s help again. You don’t want to ask for anyone’s help ever again, at least not from the most notorious trolls in the entire galaxy. There’s a massive ball of resentment curled somewhere under your airsacks, pushing against your gills. It’s the source of your stubbornness and what’s kept you up when you needed to finish homework and made you put up with midbloods everywhere you go. Yeah, they’re kind of different and all, but at least they’ve never pretended to be your friends only to betray you like the others did. You stop that train of thought before it gets dangerous. 

“Fins,” Russel greets you, as you come sit between him and Agness, mock saluting. You nod a little shallowly. 

“Ampora,” Worley says, considerably more hesitant. Trolls outside your block still look at you oddly as you go about your business. You suppose seeing you naked and swearing as you bind your gills every night has gotten most of the awkward out of the way with your bunkmates. 

“So,” you intone, after a moment of fidgety silence, “what are we doing, exactly?” 

“I guess we can just draw sticks or roll some dice,” Agness shrugs, smile wry. 

“For what?” 

She gives you the same frustrated look she does in class, when you start arguing history with the instructors, just because they don’t know how to handle a seadweller in their classes and because most of them know under whose personal favor you’re here to begin with. It makes you want to squirm like a fish on a hook. 

“To see who gets to fuck who,” Worley says matter-of-factly enough it takes a moment for the notion to sink in. 

The sound you make is a cross between a scandalized _what_ and a very embarrassing whimper. You feel yourself pale almost into whiteness before the blush comes in with a vengeance, lighting up your face an embarrassing shade of violet. 

“Do you want to live or not?” Russel snaps, a little callously. “Sorry we’re just shitbloods, your highness. I told you he’d be no good, Agness.” 

Rather than being offended by your reaction, however, Agness looks at you strangely, almost calculating. You think you’ve been good enough keeping your disdain to yourself, so far, trying your best to keep your head down and not stand out more than you really need to. 

“Eridan?” 

You snap back to reality, wishing desperately to will the blush away and rubbing your knuckles almost furiously. You feel a bubble of panic start growing inside your guts. 

“It’s not that.” You say a little lamely. You clear your throat. “It’s not about blood. Sorry. You just. Caught me by surprise.” 

They’re staring at you and it’s not helping with the whole panic thing. You try to resist the urge to squirm. 

“…are you a virgin?” Agness’ voice is so soft, so conciliatory, that if you weren’t discussing _sex_ , you’d think she’s trying to make a pale pass at you. 

Of course you are. By the time you were six you were so wound up around Feferi that you had no other friends except those you’d met through her. And then you fucked that up and all you had left were snarling conversations that went nowhere. Vriska broke off your kismesissitude pretty shortly after that, and you didn’t want a matesprit that wasn’t Feferi, because Feferi _owed_ you. You’d been so _sure_ she’d come to her senses, come back crawling back to you, asking for forgiveness. But of course she never did. She was busy preparing for the coup already, and so were most of your friends. Your last four sweeps on Alternia were spent brooding miserably about everything, sitting on your ass waiting for the world to realize how much it had wronged you and to come around and serve you your due in a silver platter. And when the actual coup went down, you were there only because Karkat dragged you along, but you realized pretty quickly no one else really wanted you around. Feferi had already replaced you with Aradia as her moirail and Sollux as her matesprit, and that was when you began to realize you didn’t really have a place among them anymore. You realized it so well when you landed your ass in a cell waiting to get culled, that you were almost happy to let them make a martyr out of you. 

“I’ll just—“ 

You try to stand, to abscond away from the block and the looks on their faces and maybe throw yourself out an airlock, but Agness and Russel both reach out and each grab a hand, pulling you back down. You land on your ass with a little _oof_. 

“Do you want to choose or do you want to roll dice?” Agness asks, serene and as if your little episode hadn’t happened at all. You’re struck by the notion that she’s going to make a terrifying addition to the fleet one day. 

“Just roll the fuckin’ dice,” you say, a little hoarse, and pretend it’s not nice that they haven’t let go of your hands. 

  


* * *

  


You wait until everyone else who has a concupiscent dispensation is gone. Your block is empty, save for you three, but there are a few other trolls mingling about in the other blocks. Those who had enough luck to have their concupiscent quadrants in the ship, you suppose. You’re currently docked in a major space station, with several dozens of ships carrying people your age. You help Agness and Russel smuggle a crate of beer into your block, because apparently booze will make the whole thing go easier. You’re not really sure about that, but you’re definitely okay with anything to make the experience a little bit less traumatic. Agness rolled for your flushed pail and Russel for your black, and you’re not really sure they didn’t cheat to get that kind of result. Then you remind yourself not everyone who uses dice is Vriska and stop yourself before you get drowned in bitterness. 

You don’t know about making things easier, but six cans of the foamy shit later, you’re so thoroughly drunk the whole world is a whirlwind of hilarity and fuzzy feelings. You watch through glassy eyes as Russel ruffles Worley’s hair and nudges him up. Then they leave, and you stare at the door stupidly, trying not to squirm as Agness delicately fingers the gills on your neck. 

“Not too hard,” you whisper, slurring all your vowels, “shit hurts like a fuckin’ whale’s tits on fire.” 

“Will keep it in mind,” she says, a little ominously, but your pan fails to react to it as it should. Instead of feeling wary, you just nod at her, absently rubbing your cheek on her thigh. “Eridan? C’mon, Princess. Let’s get this show on the road.” 

You’re about two heads taller than her, between your age and your blood, so the mechanics are awkward enough, even without counting the fact you’re having trouble getting your limbs to move the way you want them to. At least you’re glad she’s not liquored up enough she still knows what she’s doing, because you sure as fuck don’t. It takes you three tries to kiss her properly, though it’s all sloppy and wet and a distant corner of your pan shrivels up and dies because you’re kissing a tealblood and by the end of it you’re gonna have _fucked_ her. Still, biological imperatives are absolute, and five minutes of clumsy petting and nonstop kissing later, you can feel your groin heating up enough for the main course. You don’t remember getting your clothes off, though you still her hands when she goes for the rubber binder holding the gills on your sides tightly closed. You’re scared and aroused, unable to focus on one thing at the time, but by the time your bulge is wrapped around hers, you’re panting your breath against the base of one her horns. Tiny sparks of pleasure rain down your spine, instead of fighting the buzz of alcohol in your veins, making it worse. Better. You’re wet and sweaty and desperate, clutching at her back, trying to figure out how to scratch the needy itch between your legs. 

And then she bites your shoulder as the tip of her bulge starts pressing into you, and you swear the whole world falls to pieces around you. You make a needy whine, rolling your hips into hers, the muscles of your thighs burning with the strain to keep you up when all you really want is to lay back and let her take everything from you. 

“Fuck, fuck, shit, fuck,” Agness hisses into your left fin, her claws digging into your lower back, “you shouldn’t feel this good, fuck.” 

Somewhere in the back of your head, you think you hear the hiss of a door opening, but then Agness is _moving_ inside you, bulge twisting and lashing and you just shut down and wail. You hear her laugh as you dissolve into a torrent of sounds you can’t quite contain. It infuriates you. You’re propped up against the steps of Russel’s recuperacoon, using that as leverage to keep yourself upright, and thus have a free hand to reach out and try to shift her against you, raising her the two inches you need to slide into her nook. She weighs nothing to you, and the sound you make when you feel her muscles contracting around you is pitiful. 

You come the moment you feel the cool, metal edges of the pail between your thighs, sobbing against her forehead. 

Next thing you know, you’re sitting on your legs, hands folded listlessly in your lap as you stare at the contents of the pail. It’s a pretty nice shade of blue, your violet mixed with her teal. Equius’ blue, you think. You feel a hysterical cackle building up somewhere under your ribs, but then Agness puts the pail into her sylladex and slides in to hug you. She’s still naked and sticky and gross, and your stomach turns unpleasantly even if you lean into the touch. 

“You did good,” she says, “you did so good. Next time will be better, yeah?” 

Next time, right. There’s still another pail that needs to be filled. One for her, one for you. Another bucketful of Equius’ blue, sprinkled with tiny bits of your soul in it. You know you’ll regret it when you’re sober, you know you will, but you still hold onto this tealblood you don’t even really like, and cry like a wiggler waiting for his lusus. 

You don’t know how you make it into your recuperacoon, but you wake up inside it sometime around midnight the next night, so full of contempt for the universe at large, you almost want to get drunk again just so you don’t have to think. 

  


* * *

  


Russel fucks you up a wall, dominating you so easily that by the end of it you could really swear you actually do hate the asshole. He’s rough, but not enough to make you bleed, just make you wish he would. There’s no petting and waiting and holding your hand through it. He just pins you up a wall and refuses to let go of you after the first pail is full. You’re a sobbing wreck by the time he’s done the second time, and then he walks out of the block, probably to get cleaned up. You’re left sitting on the floor, back against the wall and a pail of purplish violet slurry sitting between your knees. Your bulge throbs painfully and your nook feels raw and tender, and your thighs and your back and your neck sting from welts and scratches. You shove the pail into your sylladex, to sit next to the other one, and pull your legs up so you can press your forehead against your knees. 

They did this to you, the whole lot of them. While they’re enjoying themselves, gloating about their victories and making headlines just for fucking existing, you’re stuck here, fucking trolls you don’t even really like just to survive. You hate the whole lot of them, every single one of their smug selves. 

And you hate Karkat most of all of them, for saving you from certain death, just to drop you here. 

At least if he’d let you die, everything would have stopped hurting. You wouldn’t have to pretend you care what the difference is between a D-15 and an F-29 protocol run. You wouldn’t have to read boring ass manuals about spaceships and how and why they’re run the way they are. Most of all, you wouldn’t have to admit to yourself that these fucking landdwellers give enough shits about you to not let you die for something so stupid as not having proper quadrants. You don’t think any of the others would care enough to ever offer such a thing. 

You don’t think you’d accept, if they offered. 

“You do realize you’re gonna have to get up at some point, right?” Agness says from the doorway, looking at you almost warily. “Possibly get dressed and stop dripping slurry on the floor?” 

“Suck my bulge,” you hiss at her, then freeze, staring at her in horror at your own words. 

Rather than take offense at the little outburst, she laughs. 

“Outta buy me at least a drink first, Princess.” 

You stare at her a little. You’ve tried, so hard, to keep yourself cordial and polite and well-mannered, even if they’re shitbloods that don’t appreciate it. You didn’t want to make a scene, because then Karkat would have to get involved, and then shit would have hit the fan so fast you wouldn’t even have time to feel victimized before you got your ass culled. Agness is still smirking at you. You remember bits and pieces of your time with her, like the feel of her skin under your hands and the way her bulge lashed up your insides and made you sob. You feel color blooming over your cheekbones and hate yourself for it. 

“Tell you what,” she says after a moment, and you realize you’re standing naked in a small puddle of your own secretions and this couldn’t be more embarrassing even if you _tried_ , “go make yourself presentable and I’ll give you something for being such a trooper. Maybe then you’ll loosen up and stop being such a fucking stick in the mud.” 

You bare your teeth at her, grab a towel, and storm out of the block before she can start laughing. You carefully avoid making eye contact with Russel as you shower, and by the time you come back to the block, Agness has cleaned up your mess. Part of you, the part that still feels and thinks like your six sweep old self, points out it’s the natural order of things, for a lowblood to tend to the needs of a highblood. But the rest of you is quick to point out Agness isn’t really a lowblood, is she? And there’s something deeply uncomfortable about the whole thing, something almost intimate. 

Plus, she has a needle in one hand and a wicked look in her eye. 

  


* * *

  


You hand in your pails at the proper cubicle in the med bay, letting them take a small blood sample to prove it’s really your DNA in the slurry. They cross reference it to your supposed quadrants, then make you sign some paperwork, stamp it and send you on your way without another look. 

No one says anything about the little steel ring hanging off your left fin. 

You decide to stop thinking about the whole thing until the next break comes around, and do not stop and wonder why you assume you’ll still be quadrantless by then. Even if you avoid newsfeeds as much as possible, it’s kind of impossible to miss the fact Karkat is in the ship, supposedly running an inspection. You’re almost not disappointed when he doesn’t check up on you personally. 

It’s for the best, probably. 

  


* * *

  


Your second term is oddly enjoyable, despite the fact it’s more of the same bullshit every single day. Agness and Russel pick on you pretty damn overtly, and when you finally snap and start picking back, they don’t get mad. Or intimidated. Or bitchy. It’s actually kind of fun, to trade barbs with someone that doesn’t really mean them. You get included in conversation more often, too. Not just about work and your studies, but little prying things that make you realize your blockmates are trying to get to know you better. You assume you’re not supposed to talk about Feferi at all, so that means there isn’t much you can actually say. You talk a little about your FLARP adventures and maybe your old love of history and naming your hive after your Ancestor and how Ancestors are totally a thing and not just a myth, because you know exactly who yours was. Once, you even go on a fantastic rant for almost an hour and a half, bitching out your frustration with sea-polluting landbred fucks, and feel fine even if they end up laughing at you, because somehow it doesn’t sound entirely mocking to your ears. It’s embarrassing how little you have to say, that doesn’t circle back dangerously to the Empress and the others, though. 

No one ever asks what the hell you are doing here, though, as if the topic had been deemed taboo without your knowledge. You’re a little grateful for it, nonetheless. 

“That’s just fact,” you say, and for a moment you worry you’re being too snotty, until Agness snorts behind a hand. “Laugh if you will, seadwellers are far more resilient than landdwellers. We can just fucking walk off shit that’d kill you.” 

“Princess,” Agness says, grinning with all her teeth, “you cried like a wiggler when I gave you that.” 

You flare your fins as she points to the ring, looking petulant and not giving a single solitary fuck about it. You’ve given up trying to make her stop calling you that, resigned to the fact she’ll never call you anything else ever again. Secretly, you’ve even grown fond of it. 

“You caught me by surprise,” you try to sound regal and haughty, but it only makes them laugh. You scoff. “I bet if you did it again, I wouldn’t even feel it.” 

“Oh yeah?” And there’s that smile again, with far too many teeth. Agness reminds you of a shark, sometimes. “And what if I pierced something else?” 

The block goes quiet with anticipation, and none of them bothers to pretend they’re not watching you. You arch an eyebrow, pushing your glasses up your nose. It’s late now, nearly dawn, and you all have classes tomorrow. You should be doing homework instead of taking dares. Because that’s what it is, you realize: the tilt of Agness head is daring you to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak. 

“Like what?” 

“How about those gills you’re so self-conscious about?” 

The idea is preposterous. Outrageous. Fucking landbred scum doesn’t know what the fuck gills are, much less how delicate and fragile they can be. It would hurt, oh, it would hurt enough to make you wish you would die. You can feel every eye in the block fixed on you, waiting. Judging. They don’t think you’d dare. They just think you’re all talk and no bite. Your proficiency with guns has helped you jackshit when it comes to combat training, since it’s mostly hand-to-hand, and even your significant strength isn’t enough to give you an advantage there. You know most of them tolerate you well enough, but still secretly think you’re some kind of pampered highblood who can’t do shit for himself. For all you’ve tried, for all things have gotten better, you still stick out like a sore thumb among this bunch of midblood shits that are now looking at you like you don’t measure up to them. 

Fuck that. 

“Fine,” you say, closing your husktop and shifting in your seat. “Wanna do it now?” 

And now Agness is scrutinizing you, trying to see if you’re bluffing. You’re not. She’s good with needles, and you’re more than willing to put up with the pain if it means making the whole lot of them stop looking at you like that. 

“Take off your shirt,” she says, waiting for you to back down. “I’ll go get my stuff.” 

Trolls shuffle in the block and you’re suddenly the center of attention as she vanishes into your shared block. You take a discreet breath and pull the standard black shirt over your head, ignoring the stares. You dump it on the side, a top your husktop, and then take a deeper breath and unhook the rubber binder around your ribs. Someone makes a sound as you put it with your shirt, your gills flexing and relaxing at your sides. The block feels claustrophobically small, with so many people huddled close to get a good look at you. You feel like some kind of freak show, but your pride won’t let you linger on it. 

Agness comes sit next to you, resting a small case on her knees. She pulls out a needle and a lighter and shows everyone how she heats it up. She did the same thing when she pierced your fin, except your fin isn’t basically the same as your exposed insides. You take another deep breath, flexing the opecular flaps, before you throw an arm above your head and lean back into the backrest, angling your body in such a way the flaps of skin are loose. 

“Where you want this, Princess?” Agness asks, as she looks at you expectantly, and you think she’s actually asking if you’re really sure about this. 

“No more than quarter of an inch in, lowermost one, probably near the corner so it doesn’t get in the way. Try not to put it too high or the thing is going to bleed like crazy.” 

“Okay,” she doesn’t ask how you’d know. You take another deep breath. “Here goes.” 

You clench your teeth when white hot pain explodes on your side, and turn your thoughts to Feferi and Karkat and the others, to keep yourself from making any noise. You feel the fins on your face flexing and twitching, but you’re focused and intent and you take in the slow change of atmosphere in the block. By the time she clicks the small ring shut, the entire block erupts into a triumphant cheer. The pain burns so hard you can’t really think straight, but you kept your eyes mostly dry and you didn’t even whimper. 

You bask in the blatant awe with which they look at you, and think that it’s not so bad, being surrounded by midbloods. 

  


* * *

  


By the time the second slurry collection period rolls around, you have four piercings in your gills, two in your fins, and you’re still in the top five of every class you’re in. Worley has quadrants now, but Russel and Agness do not. Neither do you. You joke about not having time for romance when you’ve got friends that have your back and so much fucking homework to do. You feel an odd sort of pleasure at the word ‘friend’ so easily thrown about to describe you. It’s nice, you suppose. They put up with your shit so long as you do your work, and you think that’s a good way of doing things. Somewhere in the back of your head, you start to question things you did and said in the past, but you’re still too bitter about it to really answer them properly. 

You don’t need to get drunk, this time around, to get the fucking done. You make more of a game of it, really. It’s not so bad. It’s really kind of fun, actually, even if they tease you for being so loud. 

The night you go in to turn in your pails, however, you run into Karkat on the way back. 

You’re just minding your own business for once, hurrying along down the corridor connecting the med bay with the galley, hoping to get there before the lunch rush hour so you can bully some snacks from the rustbloods working there. Blood politics are a complicated mess, in the wake of Feferi’s reforms, but you’re still two or three heads taller than most of the people there and you think there’s something instinctual that doesn’t let them say no when you ask – and you ask! Is it really bullying when you’re nice enough to _ask_ for things? – for a favor or two. And then you turn a corner and nearly run over someone that much shorter than you. Somewhere you hear someone cry out in fright. You look down, finding Karkat’s head level with your belly, and then register the fact sixteen different trolls have you at gunpoint. 

“…oh.” You say, stepping back and, with nothing else to do, smiling wryly in the face of Karkat’s unamused stare. “Hi, Kar.” There’s a pause, heavy and uncomfortable like a particularly unforgiving Alternian summer. “Chancellor. Sir. I mean. Good evening, Chancellor, sir.” 

“Why is it,” Karkat asks, absently waving his guards to stand back, “that you always come in at the worst possible moment, Ampora?” 

You shrug almost delicately. 

“Pure natural talent?” 

“Oh, just move your glutes, fuckface.” 

Karkat grabs you by the elbow – someone gasps in the background – and drags you along as he stomps down the corridor with a look on his face that makes trolls plaster themselves against the walls to avoid the slightest chance of getting in his way. He leads you to the higher ranking side of the ship, which you’ve kept yourself as far away from as possible during your stay here. He shoves you inside a block that you assume has been furnished for his stay, just going by the sheer amount of scarlet red in the décor. You stumble your way into a chair as he locks the door and turns to glower at you like you’re the single most irritating bastard he’s ever had to deal with. Just out of spite, you keep sitting down, despite the fact he hasn’t given you permission to sit and you should technically be groveling like you’ve never groveled in your life, because he’s the High fucking Chancellor of the Alternian Empire and the only troll that doesn’t bow to him so low their forehead hits the floor, is the Empress herself. 

“Now tell me,” Karkat says in the most put upon voice you’ve ever heard coming from him, “what the fuck did you do now?” 

You blink, spite slowly melting into bitterness as you feel yourself start to get angry. Of course he thinks you’ve done something. You’re Eridan fucking Ampora, everything is always your fault. You fold your arms over your chest and slide down the chair a little, hooking one leg over the other. You couldn’t look more disrespectful if you tried. 

“Who says I’ve done something now?” You pause just enough for it to be significant. “ _Sir?_ ” 

“Don’t give me the fucking insubordination shit, Ampora,” Karkat narrows his eyes, lip curling up in disdain. “I’m not in the fucking mood. It’s been a goddamn sweep and no one’s heard a single fucking thing from you, directly and otherwise.” 

“Yeah?” You feel your left fin twitching a little in annoyance, “I thought that’s what ‘get out of my fucking hair’ meant. Remember that? You made a very loud emphasis on that, last time we talked.” You can’t stop yourself from sneering. “You know, before you kicked me head first into a shuttle without so much as a by your leave.” 

“Yeah, and you actually did as you were told,” he says, sarcastic. “Please.” 

It hurts. It hurts enough you’re sure it shows in your face, wiping off the smirk and leaving you bare like an exposed nerve. It _hurts_. You’ve fluctuated between hating Karkat and being grateful that he saved you, but even when you were feeling angriest about things, you never thought the day would come when he’d actually hurt you. Because hating him or not, you’ve worked hard. You do your chores and sit through your lectures and hand in your assignments and get along with your blockmates and _you’ve been trying so hard_. At some point during the past sweep you stopped trying for the sake of proving them wrong and instead did your best because it hurt your pride not to. You haven’t indulged in a single fantasy involving any of your old friends realizing how much worse they are off now without you in perigees. The thought makes you realize how little you care about them these days, and how infuriating you find it that they think you’re still hang up on them. Why the fuck would you still care about them? The world doesn’t revolve around them. 

“Fuck you, Vantas,” you hiss at him, fins blared and eyes all but glowing with contempt. 

“Eridan—“ 

“Fuck you all!” 

You storm out of the block without looking back. You keep the anger burning bright in your gut as you navigate your way back to your block, because if you stop being angry you’re going to realize what you just did. 

You’re so dead, it’s not even funny anymore. 

  


* * *

  


Miraculously, you do not get shot on your way back. In fact, the only injury you sustain is the punch in the face Russel greets you with when you open the door to your block. It knocks you clear off your feet. He yells at you, because apparently your little encounter with Karkat made it into the gossip vine in record time. Then Agness yells at you some more, because you’re a fucking idiot, what the hell were you doing in the High Chancellor’s block and how are you not dead? Halfway through a halfassed explanation, you realize they were worried about you. 

They were _worried_. About _you_. 

The novelty makes you stare at them as if you’re seeing them for the first time. 

You laugh at the sheer idiocy of it all, most of it your own, and then you three get so gloriously drunk you don’t even remember who started fucking who. 

  


* * *

  


Your third term is surreal, to say the least. 

Less than half of you remain in the program, and the workload hikes up into sheer ridiculousness. You do your best to keep up, slaving hours away in front of your husktop and occasionally picking fights with Russel and Agness just for the sake of a damn good swearing fit. You don’t really pity or hate them, but you like them well enough. Agness continues to fill your gills with little gold rings and you make a habit to lounge around the common block shirtless, just to show off your little trophies. Most of the time, you end up fucking in the ablution block after she’s done punching a new hole in you, because the pain really gets you going. If the others notice or care, they keep it to themselves. 

The second week of midterms, you’re arguing with Russel about the math in his homework when the common block falls eerily, terrifyingly quiet. You look and it soon becomes clear why: Terezi is standing by the doorway, wearing something dubiously reminiscing of her old FLARP clothes. Scarlet red and teal, you think, is the most fucking garish combination in the universe, but you don’t say a thing. Everyone knows who she is, though. Of course they do. She’s Terezi fucking Pyrope, personal law advisor to the Empress. 

“Mr. Sourgrapes,” she says, grinning at you with all her teeth. 

You refuse to stand up, flopped back on the couch. You arch an eyebrow at her and tilt your head to the side. 

“Pyrope,” you intone, carefully neutral, though the lack of any titles makes someone gasp in fear. “The hell are you doing here, got lost on your way to the nutrition block?” 

“Funny,” she says, in a tone that makes it clear it wasn’t. “Can’t a friend drop by to see how you’re doing?” 

“You ain’t my friend, Pyrope,” you snort, bitterly. “And I’ve got an exam to study for. Either tell me what the fuck you want, or leave alone.” 

You feel Agness sinking her claws into your arm, hard enough you can feel the skin tearing and blood welling up. You don’t even flinch. 

“Are you familiar with the term insubordination, Mr. Ampora?” There is something dangerous in Terezi’s voice. Predatory. You see trolls backing away from her in the corner of your eye. “In certain circumstances, it is a criminal offense.” 

“Yeah?” You narrow your eyes at her and then snarl a smile at her. “ _Arrest me_.” 

It goes without saying that she already has. Precisely for insubordination. Terezi was grinning ferally when she threw you into that tiny cell. She’d been so _glad_ to be rid of you. They’d all been so glad to see you gone. Only Karkat had stuck up for you, but so much for that, you think, bitterly remembering your last conversation with the man. If that could even be counted as a conversation. Terezi’s smile falls bit by bit, her hand tightening on the head of her cane. You wonder if she’ll drop the pretense and just stab you to death. You think she wants to. 

“Fortunately for you,” she says after a moment, recovering her damnable grin, “this is not one of those circumstances. Keep up the good work, Mr. Sourgrapes.” 

She turns to leave, an almost cheerful turn on her step. Before anyone can stop you, you’re flipping her the finger with both hands. 

“Go lick the inside of my nook, Pyrope!” 

To your absolute frustration, all she does is laugh as she walks away. You get yelled at for that, too, just to add insult to injury. 

  


* * *

  


“I didn’t think you’d actually sort yourself out.” 

You stare at Karkat as he looks down at his mug, so much sugar in the damn thing it’s more syrup than coffee by now. He stirs it fretfully, unable to stand still. You’re still enough for both of you, you think, sitting before the desk, back ramrod straight. This time, you’d actually gotten a formal summons for this meeting, which meant you’d had a chance to dress up properly and look a little less like a wreck. 

“You told me to,” you say after a long moment, when it’s clear Karkat has no idea what to say. You swallow hard. “Fix my shit or die.” 

“But you actually _fixed_ your shit,” Karkat insists, and the burn of old hurt echoes in you again. “I didn’t think you would. I thought you’d say whatever you needed to, to save your hide, and then as soon as we looked the other way, you’d go back to the same stupid shit again.” 

“I wouldn’t—“ 

“Eridan,” and Karkat sounds so tired, it actually makes you shut up and listen. “You once held _trollkind_ hostage to try and get Feferi to be your matesprit.” 

You open your mouth to retort, then wince and let it fall shut without a sound. By refusing to hunt down lusii until Feferi took you back in the quadrant you wanted, you had, in essence, done exactly that. It hadn’t felt that way, back then. It feels like an eternity ago, now, and you can’t quite remember your reasoning for it, only the memory of being hurt and desperate. She was everything you had, you thought, so of course you had to be everything she had, too. Except it doesn’t work that way. You admit, very quietly, very privately, that past you was a fucking moron. 

“She went to me, you know,” Karkat says suddenly, now busy turning the cup around in his hands. If he doesn’t stop fidgeting with the damn thing you might scream. “After you yelled at her. She trolled me and told me all about it. She was so fucking devastated, Eridan. She was _terrified_. She didn’t know if she could kill enough lusii on her own and she was tired and worn and heartbroken.” Karkat gives you a venomous glare. “And you know what the worst part was? Having to convince her _it wasn’t her fault_.” You freeze. “Oh yeah, she thought it was. She considered it, you bulgemunching shit. I don’t know what you told her, but you hurt her enough she very nearly gave in to your fucking sick manipulation.” 

“I don’t remember,” you say after a moment, staring down at your hands. “I don’t… I remember being angry and hurt. And I remember I knew after talking with her, it would be alright, but I don’t even remember what I said.” 

“She never forgot,” Karkat deadpans, glaring at you. “You hurt her so bad, asshole, that she’s the fucking crowned Empress of Alternia and all its colonies, and she still considers _you_ the greatest threat to her person.” 

You stare. You think the stare conveys very well everything you feel at the moment. Karkat laughs an ugly laugh, ragged around the edges. 

“I had to fight tooth and nail to get you to come along, you know,” he finally takes a sip from his coffee, which must be cold by now. He licks his lips absently, still not looking at you. “I had to swear on my life I wouldn’t let you ever be alone with her. I figured you’d be of some help, somehow. You were good ordering people around and by god, we needed to order a lot of people around when the coup began. And then, the first thing you did after the worst was over was to yell at her.” He snarls at you. “You yelled at the newly crowned Empress, for no goddamn reason at all.” 

“She was wrong!” You snarl back, half standing up. You let out a hiss of air between your teeth and sit back down. “She was wrong. I didn’t start yelling at her, just because. I pointed out a mistake and she turned around and told me to shut up.” 

“So why _didn’t_ you shut the fuck up?” 

“Because she was wrong!” You throw your hands up in the air. “She was rehearsing her goddamn coronation speech. The first fucking impression she was gonna give the entire fucking Empire, and she’d made a mistake. And none of you fuckers knew about it because none of you ever bothered to research it. It was a political pitfall, and being her goddamn political advisor was my job!” 

“It wasn’t your job,” Karkat snaps back. “Nobody cared about what you were doing, I just put you there because I didn’t want to leave you behind. No one cared and it didn’t matter at all, it was just an excuse to keep you _alive_. And then you fucked it up, Eridan.” 

You bare your teeth at him. 

“She was wrong.” 

“It doesn’t matter if she was wrong or not, she’s the fucking Empress!” You flinch back from that roar. “All you had to do was shut the fuck up and sit back and let her do her thing, and then you picked a fight with her and next thing I know everyone’s pushing to have you fucking executed for high treason! You already were a fucking liability and then you went and gave everyone a fucking excuse to get rid of you!” 

“Then why the hell didn’t you let them?” You snarl back, and you hate yourself, because this hurts. This hurts a whole fucking lot and you’re about to break down crying like a little grub and you can’t _afford_ to. “If they all wanted me gone, why didn’t you just _let_ them?” 

You lean back into the backrest of the chair as Karkat throws the cup at the wall. It shatters into a thousand little shards of porcelain. 

“Because I _love_ you, you pitiful fucking wreck,” Karkat hisses at long last, leaning on the desk and seemingly swelling in size. “I’ve loved your stupid fucking, pathetic ass since I was _five_.” 

The world slows down to a crawl. You stare at him, all the anger and frustration and wariness plain to see in his face. It occurs to you that he’s your age. He’s fourteen, barely old enough to have stopped growing, and yet he’s the second most powerful creature in the entire fucking _galaxy_. You can barely keep track of your classes at this point, and yet he’s tasked with keeping track of the entire fucking Empire. Weren’t you whining about too much work just yesterday? Being a little melodramatic bitch and picking fights with your friends because fuck resource management, really, all the fucking simulations are dumb as bricks and there’s no goddamn right answer to any of them? You can’t even imagine what he’d been doing yesterday, what kind of state business he was losing sleep over. 

“I don’t—“ 

“Get out,” Karkat snaps after a moment, pointing at the door. “I was wrong about you.” 

You never thought he’d hurt you worse than he’s done so far, but those words make you want to cry and your eyes sting hard enough you want to fall to your knees. 

“Kar—“ 

“Get the fuck out, Eridan,” he says, voice composed and controlled and all the more dangerous because of it. “You got your shit together. Congratulations, Ampora, I didn’t think you would. Now get the fuck out of my sight and keep not fucking up, shitstain.” 

Wordlessly, you go. 

  


* * *

  


“I want a battle cruiser,” Russel says after a moment, staring intently at his cards. “Big, badass bitch. A frontline fighter.” 

You play two pairs and smirk as Agness punches you in the shoulder for having a better hand than her. You grin as you grab her chips and ignore the way she huffs and leans in to rest her chin on your thigh. Out of your block, you are the only three that remain. The rest were culled or rerouted to other programs that suited their talents better. Everyone else is nervous and fretting about finals and submitting applications to join a crew, but you three are oddly at peace. You are amused to think that, once upon a time, you’d have wanted a big, badass bitch of a battle cruiser as your own. You’d have wanted to command it, though. These days, you think you’ll be better off administrating a courier ship. Smaller and more manageable, without having to deal with the nightmare that are requisition forms for high caliber weaponry. 

“I think I want to try my hand at a station,” Agness says after a moment, watching you play your last hand against Russel’s. “I hear they’re launching a new one near the Raux system. The first one built under the new Empress and all. It’d be fun to start anew somewhere like that.” You hum in the back of your throat, as you pick up a new card and keep yourself from grimacing. “What about you, Princess?” 

“Something small and manageable,” you say eventually, offering them both a small smile. “You know, the sort where you know every goddamn asshole in the crew and can hold gossip over their fucking heads to keep them in line. Just… a place to grow old in.” 

“Yeah,” Russel says after a moment, picking his winnings without his usual glee. “That sounds nice.” 

You forget, sometimes, that you are probably going to outlive them by a good dozen hundred sweeps or so. Russel has at least twenty sweeps left in him, if he doesn’t get culled along the way. And Agness will last maybe fifty more, before she too just… ends. You’re two sweeps older than them, even if it doesn’t really show anymore, but what difference will it make in the long run? One day they’ll be gone and more likely than not, you’ll forget about them. You wish it weren’t that way. You wish you could take a few hundred sweeps off your life and give it to them. But that’s not how the world works and you three know it. You handed in your last set of pails yesterday, after a few rolls in the block’s floor and one too many beers. Next time drone season rolls around, you’ll each be posted in a different ship, possibly an entirely different corner of the galaxy. You’ll have found actual quadrantmates, or made friends with benefits within your crews. 

Oddly, you think of Karkat. You never saw him again, after that last explosive conversation in his block. You did as you were told and kept your head down and never gave him reason to think about you again. You wonder if he’s ever had friends with benefits, like you do, but you doubt it. Too risky, for a troll of his position. He probably filled his quadrants with important people, like it’s some kind of political statement. The thought makes you sad, somehow. Karkat was always such a hopeless romantic, arguing romcoms and tropes with you in between gossiping cheerfully about who was flushed for who and who needed an auspistice before shit hit the fan. Karkat deserves to have quadrants that are real. Trolls that pity and hate him as much as he pities and hates them. It seems blasphemous that it’d be otherwise. 

“Princess?” Agness looks up at you with a frown, and you realize you’re clenching your teeth to keep the sobs inside your throat, tears slowly sliding down your cheeks. “Eridan? What’s wrong?” 

What’s wrong? You’re alive because the most perfect creature in the galaxy loved you, and you’ve ruined it all. You never let yourself think about this, before, because there were always exams and classes and _things_ to do. But now you’re done, about to graduate with honors from your class, out of sheer hard work and without a single nod to your blood, and there’s nothing left to distract you from the sheer misery you’ve been sitting on for the past two sweeps. You never _knew_. Agness sits in your lap, wrapping her arms around your shoulders, and you cling to her, because you never _knew_. You always thought Karkat was your only friend, the only troll you could be honest with. You cared for him, sincerely, when you were kids, even more so because he was the only one who ever bothered to talk to you, after the fallout with Feferi. And you were so dumb, during the coup, watching him work himself to death and still sparing a word or a look or _something_ your way. You wanted to help so badly you didn’t realize you were only making it worse. And then he saved your life and _you wanted him so much_. 

You could have said something. You could have done something to let him know his feelings weren’t unrequited, but you never knew. Because that was just Karkat being Karkat. He was always too good for you, and didn’t you learn your lesson with Feferi, as much as you liked to pretend you didn’t? People too good for you really _are_ too good for you. You didn’t deserve good. You don’t even deserve Agness trying to hug the sad out of you, or Russel awkwardly shooshing and papping your knee. You’re a monumental fuck up and Karkat loved you and you ruined everything without even knowing. 

“You’re such a wreck,” Russel says wryly, as you slow down a little, hissing breaths between your teeth. 

You feel your eyes filling up with tears again, but you laugh when Agness kicks him for making you cry again. You laugh and you sob and you’re sixteen fucking sweeps old and just beginning to really understand how much of a fucking disaster you’ve been all your life. 

  


* * *

  


“You don’t look very happy for someone who’s supposed to be celebrating.” 

You look up and blink once, twice, and the strange mirage refuses to vanish: Karkat Vantas, wearing the anonymous black uniform of a clerk, hands stuck inside his pockets and giving you a small smile. He looks positively puny, standing barely five feet five against your eight feet three. He’s never been the most impressive of trolls, objectively speaking. He’s short, his teeth are endearingly blunt and his horns are more like nubs than anything else. But when he puts his mind to it, he’s terrifying. He’s got an iron will that will fucking reorganize reality if necessary, before giving a single inch of leeway. You realize you’re gaping like a fish and close your mouth, looking back to your glass. 

“Don’t really feel really happy right now,” you say, after you realize he’s waiting for you to say something. “Just saw Agness and Russel off a few hours ago.” You pause, looking over the corner of your eye to see him nodding along. You clear your throat. “My friends,” you explain, awkwardly. 

“Agness Syzygy and Russel Zephyr, your matesprit and your kismesis, right?” 

“Friends,” you correct, shrugging a little uncomfortable with the fact he knows their names from the top of his head. “Just friends.” You nod at the empty seat at your right. “Wanna sit down and have a drink, or is this official business?” 

You don’t think it is, if nothing else because he’s not decked in white and gold and red, but it never hurts to ask. You feel something inside you twitch when he nods and slides into the stool, and you bite back a small smile as he huffs when he realizes his feet don’t touch the floor. It’s stupidly endearing and sinks into your gut like a knife. 

“That’s not what the records say,” Karkat muses absently, drumming his claws on the bar and carefully avoiding to look at you in the eye. 

You snort. 

“It’s pretty stupid to let yourself be culled just because you don’t have the right quadrants,” you say, wondering absently about the wisdom of sharing that tidbit of information with him. You’re still waiting to be assigned to a ship, because apparently there was a bureaucratic snag along the way. You can’t afford to fuck up, but you also can’t afford to lie to him. “It’s not that uncommon for friends to help out.” 

“You donated with the same people for four consecutive sweeps,” Karkat shrugs, still not looking at you. “It just gives people ideas.” 

“People are dumb,” you snort, tipping back your glass with a sigh. “I don’t really have any quadrants. Never have, really, since… you know.” You sigh and tap the bar twice with the bottom of the glass to call the bartender to where you are. She’s a nice enough girl, she puts up with your crap often enough. You give her a brilliant smile and show two fingers. She rolls her eyes at you and goes back to serving your drinks. Then you notice Karkat watching the whole exchange with a little frown. “My treat,” you explain, smiling a little hollowly. “Since I’m supposed to be celebrating and all.” 

“That doesn’t make any fucking sense,” he snorts, rolling his eyes at you, but he nods at the bartender when she puts a glass in front of him and another in front of you. 

“You stalking me doesn’t make any fucking sense,” you say, and then bite down a laugh as he chokes on the first sip of his drink. 

“I’m not fucking stalking you,” he hisses violently, finally looking at you in the eye, even if it’s just so he can glare you into submission. “And how the fuck are you still alive if you’re drinking fucking _gasoline_ on a regular basis?” 

“Good stuff is supposed to burn on the way down,” you arch an eyebrow. “And you waltzed in here asking questions about my friends, calling them by name and making abysmal assumptions about my quadrants.” You grin. “Don’t quit your job, Kar, you’re a shitty stalker.” 

You think you’ve pushed too far, when he doesn’t immediately reply. You’ve fucked up again, clearly. But you’re just so used to the banter and the sniping that doesn’t really mean shit, just wit for the sake of wit. You don’t know what you’re gonna do without your friends. Before you can apologize, however, Karkat snorts. It’s acid and strangely self-deprecating, and you feel the oddest urge to wrap your arms around him. Instead, you take another sip from your drink. 

“You really have changed, haven’t you?” And there’s a faint sense of wonder in his voice. “You cleaned your act and got your shit together. I never thought you would.” 

“You’ve said that before,” and you know your expression is closed off now, guarded, because when he starts talking like that, he starts hurting you in ways no one else can. 

“I didn’t want to believe you’d change,” Karkat goes on, tracing the rim of the glass with a claw. “Told myself you were going to break my heart to a thousand little pieces if I let myself really believe you were going to do things right.” 

“I just—“ 

“And then you broke it anyway,” he goes on, almost dreamily, and yet without a hint of accusation in his tone. “And it wasn’t by fucking shit up and proving you were the same irredeemable fucktard I knew.” He takes a sip from the drink and you can’t help but think it looks like he’s gathering courage for something. “I came to see you, you know, when the first drone season hit. I figured you’d want to talk with me so I could bail you out of it. I didn’t want to seek you out first, because then it’d just reinforce your goddamn martyr complex and make you feel like I _owed_ you shit. I wanted you to ask me. And you didn’t.” He shrugs again. “Half the ship was gone on concupiscent dispensation and you hadn’t gone looking for me, so I started worrying you were too fucking proud to save your hide. I go looking for you, and what do I find? You, and a tealblood, proving quite thoroughly that you didn’t need any help to get past the drones.” 

“You _saw_ that?” 

“I got so _pissed_ at you,” Karkat ignores the question and laughs, the same ugly laugh you remember. “I didn’t even have any reason to get pissed at you, you weren’t doing anything wrong. But I can never think straight when it comes to you, and I was so fucking angry, Eridan, I could have murdered someone.” 

“I’m sorry,” you say stupidly, still trying to wrap your mind around the fact Karkat _saw_. 

“The fuck are you apologizing for, numbskull?” 

“I don’t know,” you shrug, ducking your head down a little. “Just… feels like I should.” 

Karkat stares at you like you’ve somehow grown a second head. You blink back, thumb rubbing your knuckles and lips twitching into a tentative smile. 

“Fuck this shit,” he says after a moment, and you stare wide-eyed as he knocks back the rest of the glass in one go. “Come on.” 

“Wait, I—“ You finish your glass in a hurry and leave your ID on the table. 

The bartender will swipe it for the drinks and you can come pick it up tomorrow night. It’s not like it’ll be the first time you’ve been dragged out of the bar by pressing business, but this is the first time you don’t care what happens to the rest of the world. You scramble after Karkat as he stalks away, fast enough you’re having trouble keeping up with him despite your longer stride. He navigates the corridors with startling ease, and you hurry to keep up behind him as he storms past guards who seem to take one look at him and his posture and decide better not to try and stop him. You’re back at his block, you realize, the same one you had that conversation sweeps ago. But Karkat doesn’t stop once the doors are closed, instead heading for another set of doors and you realize with a jolt those are his private quarters. You take a moment to appreciate the spaciousness of them with a twisted sort of nostalgia, eyes looking at the large recuperacoon and the concupiscent platform and the wardrobifier and the mirrors and the computers. You take it all in, but it doesn’t quite sink in until Karkat starts pulling the shirt over his shoulders with a terrifying violence. 

“C’mon,” he says, and you’re trying, honest to god, you’re trying to stare at his face, “let’s do this.” 

He’s breathing hard and his cheeks are flushed and he’s fighting to get the belt off with the telltale signs of someone who hasn’t dressed himself the boring way in _sweeps_. You take a deep breath, close your eyes, and then let it out without whimpering. 

“No.” 

“No?” He looks at you, uncomprehending, and his eyes are _huge_. “What do you mean no?” 

“No, Karkat,” you enunciate very, very clearly, and dig your claws into the palms of your hands. “We’re not doing this.” 

He throws himself at you, hands first, and you don’t know if he’s trying to tear off your clothes or your face, but either prospect makes you grimace at the moment. You snarl and let training take over, taking half a step back and tilting your body sideways, and then you wrap an arm around his back and _roll_. Then you’re sitting on the High Chancellor’s hips, pinning his wrists down on the floor, and oh, you’re pretty sure you’re going to get culled for this. You’re so, so dead, there’s no way you’re ever going to walk out of this alive. 

“Eridan!” Karkat yowls at you, furious and frantic, squirming and buckling under you, and you hiss and bare your teeth. 

“I said no!” 

“ _Why?_ ” There are tears in his eyes, and it breaks your fucking heart. Splits it right in the middle and makes you want to lean in and kiss each and every one of them away 

“Because you’re drunk,” you say instead, swallowing hard. You have no idea how much he’d drunk, before meeting you in the bar, but holy shit, that must have been some really good stuff. “Because I’m a _liability_. Because you’ll regret it once we’re done, and I adore you more than anything else in the world and it will fucking _kill_ me if I fuck this up any more than I already have.” 

You want to take it back when he starts crying. You want to give him everything he wants, but you can’t. You _can’t_. You ease off him, slowly, but all he does is curl up on his side and cry, ugly sobs that wreck his entire frame. You swear under your breath and reach out to hold him. He’s boneless in your grip, sprawling in your lap and burying his face and his tears into your chest. You pat his back and stare at the ceiling, fairly certain that if there’s a god, he really fucking hates you. You only let go of him when he unceremoniously pukes all over your shirt. You bang your head into the wall maybe three times before you grab him, wipe off the vomit off his skin and dump him into the recuperacoon. After cleaning up the mess, you take one look at the ablution block and decide, fuck it, if you’re going to get culled, you might as well take a nice bath before it happens. You fill the tub, which is the size of a small pool – these used to be seadweller quarters, you’re pretty sure – and stretch your gills with a despairing sigh. 

  


* * *

  


“We’re both kind of really fucking stupid, aren’t we?” 

You stir, arching up into the hands playing with your horns. Karkat’s sitting at the edge of the tub, watching you with an expression that’s three quarters regret and one fourth hangover. You blink yourself awake, feeling your gills contracting at your sides. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Karkat sobs a laugh and unceremoniously shoves your head back underwater. It doesn’t do much, really, except giving you an excuse to blink with your secondary eyelids, which you haven’t really done in forever and a half. When he lets go, you surface cautiously, trying to minimize the disaster that’s your hair, now plastered down your face and the back of your neck. 

“You need to stop apologizing,” Karkat says, almost severe, “it’s fucking weird as shit.” 

“…I’m sorry?” You say, a little stupidly, and flinch when his hand reaches out for your head again, but instead of shoving you down, he ruffles your wet hair. 

“Can you dry up and get dressed?” It’s not an order at all, and the strangeness of the situation makes you blink. “I’d… like to talk to you.” 

You watch him go, closing the door behind him. You sink down to the bottom of the tub, passing water through all your gills one last time before slowly standing up and holding your breath until they're emptied. It’s always harder to switch from gills to airsacks when you’ve been lounging about in fresh water. You step out of the tub and towel yourself dry a little ruefully. You dress yourself pretty efficiently, but take a moment to try and tame your hair back into something presentable. When you’re done, it’s been like fifteen minutes and you’re pretty sure you’re going to get yelled at. 

Karkat doesn’t yell at you. 

He nods to a tray of food, which makes your innards twitch and growl in acknowledgement. You pretend your damn hardest you’re not blushing as you slink over to sit on the chair next to Karkat's, and start picking at the food as if you weren’t hungry enough to just tilt back the entire plate in one go. Your classmates always picked on you for eating nearly as much as all of them combined, but you have a seadweller metabolism and sometimes it felt you burned more energy digesting the food you got than what energy the food itself gave you. You’ve never been in any real danger of starving, of course, but you’re used to eating all the fucking time. 

“You don’t have a matesprit,” Karkat says after a moment. You pause, fork hovering above a slice of raw meat, and shake your head. “And last morning you said—“ 

“I didn’t say anything,” you say quietly, shrugging awkwardly when he gives you a long suffering look. “Do you even know how quadrants work?” 

“I love you,” he says, disarmingly earnest. “And you, and I quote, ‘adore me more than anything else in the world’.” 

“Did you really remember the wording or did you review the fucking security footage?” You shove another slice of meat into your mouth, and continue to pretend you’re not terrified. 

“Security footage. Which also shows I puked all over your face—“ 

“I’m _eating_ , Kar, thank you.” 

“So I understand if the adoration has since vanished, but if it hasn’t…” 

You shove the plate away even though it pains you. Literally. You’re _starving_. Karkat looks at you like you’re some fascinating, exotic creature from an alien world that he doesn’t quite understand. You resist the urge to laugh and instead drum your fingers on the table. 

“Do you have something to ask me?” 

He frowns, defensive. 

“Don’t you?” 

You resist the urge to bang your head into the wall. Or cry. You reckon crying would feel amazing about just now. Instead you run a hand over your hair and carefully avoid looking at him in the eye. 

“It’s unacceptable for a troll of lower standing to propose a quadrant to a troll of higher caste,” you say the words as if you were speaking to a very small child, which is in itself unacceptable. Karkat is staring at you like you’ve lost your mind. “Karkat. You’re thinking about caste meaning blood. It’s not about blood anymore, is it?” You can see the cogs in his head turning. 

“It’s about rank.” 

“If I’d so much as kissed you,” you say, “Captor would have culled me himself.” 

“That’s not—“ 

“Tell me he doesn’t follow your every move every moment of the day,” you challenge, sneering a little. “Go on. Your kismesis is the greatest computer genius in recorded fucking history. Frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t wire my block just to keep an eye on me.” 

“He did,” Karkat mumbles, a little awkwardly. 

“Well, there you go—he did?” 

“Every single time you fucked one of your _friends_ ,” you don’t like the way the word sounds, in Karkat’s mouth, but he looks miserable, “I’d get either video footage or the best angle shots of the damn thing along my breakfast the next night.” 

“Your kismesis is a fucking asshole,” you shudder, and barely resist the urge to look around and try to pinpoint where the cameras are. 

“Yeah, that’s kind of the point,” Karkat says, smiling wryly, “he’s a hateful asshole.” His expression sobers. “You’re not a liability.” 

“You don’t have to backpedal for the sake of my delicate feelings, Kar,” you smirk almost convincingly, “I can take the truth.” 

“That’s the thing, though.” Karkat starts playing with a napkin. It makes you want to fidget too, but you resist. You have better manners than this, honestly. “You _were_ a liability. Before. You know. I don’t even know what the fuck happened.” 

“I grew up,” you mutter a little sadly, forcing a corner of your lip up. “Bit of a late bloomer, ain’t I?” 

“The point _is_ ,” Karkat says, clearly exasperated. “That I… you know.” He makes a vague motion with his hands, and it’s endearingly pathetic to the point you wonder how exactly did he and Captor quadranted each other. Things you missed being a douchebag and you’ll never know now, you suppose. Karkat flushes scarlet and mutters something under his breath. 

“I’ll say yes,” you reply, strangely serene and at peace with the whole damn world, “if you actually ask me.” 

He grabs you by a horn and pulls you down so he can kiss you. You nearly fall off the chair, but then he’s shoving his tongue into your mouth, and you’re melting in a moaning puddle of content. Your spine will hate you, after all is said and done. You can just tell he’s going to make your back hurt a lot, but you don’t give a single solitary fuck, kissing back like he’s air itself. 

“ _Yes_ ,” you whisper against his lips when he pull back, eyes half lidded and dazed. 

“You know what fucking sucks?” Karkat says, lips twisting a little and hands petting your head like that somehow makes up for the weird ass angle he’s got you leaning on. “I have fifteen minutes to get dressed and show my ugly mug out there.” You whimper. “Fifteen minutes ain’t enough for all I want to do to you right now.” 

“I can wait,” you lie, despite the fact your nook is getting wet already. 

“Finish your breakfast, I need to take a shower.” He brushes hair off your forehead with enough gentleness to make you hurt. “A really long, really cold shower.” 

You watch him vanish into the ablution block before you let your face fall into the table, groaning in despair. Your husktop chimes to let you know you’ve got a message. You pull it out with a blink, since the only people you have in your contacts list are supposed to be in stasis, waiting to reach their designed posts. 

twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling caligulasAquarium [CA]

TA: greate2t computer geniiu2 iin recorded fuckiing hii2tory, huh

You stare at the chat window and consider your options. After a moment, you decide the best possible course of action is to put your face in your hands and groan again. 

  


* * *

  


“You really do have rings in your gills. I thought that was just Captor fucking with me.” Karkat stares at them like they hold the answer to the universe and all its mysteries. He reaches out a hand and stops, looking up at you nervously. “Can I touch?” 

“Sure, they’re just—“ You arch your back against the concupiscent platform, moaning loud and drawn out. 

“Sensitive,” Karkat finishes for you, with the same eager awe in his voice. He hooks a claw on the small bead in one of them, teasing lightly, and it’s enough to have your bulge lashing out at air, smearing violet all over your groin. 

“This is gonna be a really short show,” you gasp, digging your claws into the edges of the platform, “if you don’t move on from there.” 

“Bullshit,” Karkat barks out incredulously. “You can’t come just from _that_.” 

“Tug the ones closest to my ba— _oh_.” 

Your eyes roll back as the pain traces arches along your nerve endings, making your bulge twitch and twist, and the inside of your nook pulse greedily. Encouraged by the sounds you make, Karkat continues tugging at the rings, almost playing you like a bizarre musical instrument. He pulls and kisses and pushes and pets, just to see what sound you’ll make when he does. And then he leans in and licks the very edge of a gill and your entire spine lights up. The scream is still echoing in the block as you drip genetic material into the pail. He hasn’t even touched your bulge or your nook. 

“Okay,” he says after a moment, pressing along the bands of muscles down your abdomen as it contracts and ripples with the force of orgasm. “I stand fucking corrected, holy shit.” 

You glare at him, sprawled as long as you are in the plush platform, back curved slightly and legs spread wantonly. 

“If you don’t shove _something_ inside me in the next five seconds, I’m going to fucking _murder_ you.” 

He laughs and you whine, even as he kisses you. He presses small, delicate kisses all over your face and your fins, and you moan as he throws a leg over your hips and sits his weight in your thighs. He weighs _nothing_. You don’t really understand, but then he’s sliding into you, and you dissolve into a fit profanity. He’s _hot_. You didn’t think he’d feel _hot_. Agness and Russel had warmer blood than you, sure, but neither of them had bulges that felt like fucking whips of fire. You’re slick and pliable from the climax you just had, so he slides in easily enough. But it feels like he’s searing the insides of your nook, and that’s without him really moving. You reach down to hold his ass and he squeaks indignantly. You laugh, bending over to press a kiss to his forehead, and he kills your laughter when he starts moving. His brow is furrowed in concentration, and he’s clearly overriding any instinctual movement for the sake of touching you with purpose. You’ve tried that before, but you’ve never been really successful. What you’re really good at, though, is clenching your muscles to make your nook ripple. Karkat bites you in retaliation when you do, sinking his teeth on the small dip where your ribs meet your sternum. You ripple again, even if you’re still feeling pleasantly boneless. He sobs and then grabs one of your hands, shoving it further down. You can take a hint. 

You let yourself slide down an inch, causing Karkat to tense and hold you like a vice, but it’s enough to tilt your hips in a different angle and make sure he’s buried into you as deep as he’ll go. It also makes it easier for you to reach down and slide a finger along the edge of his nook. He closes his eyes so tight there are tears gathering in the corners. It takes him a moment to find good enough footing so that he can roll his hips. Moans and sighs and groans and whimpers rush out of your lips and you don’t give a single solitary fuck about it, because it feels _amazing_. 

“Tell me,” Karkat whispers after what feels like forever, stopping completely, even his bulge. “Tell me.” 

“Flushed for you,” you say fervently, after you’ve scooped together enough bits of your pan. “Oh, Kar.” 

He fingers your rings and breaks down crying, and you can hear him gushing into the pail, his genetic material mixing with yours, and you want to reach out and hold him and ask why he’s crying, but he’s all but shoved you off a cliff with those little touches to your gills. As soon as you can force yourself to move, you’re wrapping your arms around him, arching your back so his face is buried in your neck. 

“I knew you couldn’t be that bad,” he says, and he’s still inside you. You can’t deal with this. You just can’t. “I knew, but you kept fucking up and pissing everyone off and being such a ginormous asshole. And they kept telling me I wasn’t rational about you, that I saw what I wanted to see.” 

“I am,” you say, throat raw from screaming, “admittedly, a phenomenal douchewaffle when the mood strikes me.” 

“You knew about my blood, Eridan,” Karkat whispers, compressing himself into a little ball of warmth against your ribs. “You were the first one who knew, and you never told. You told me about my Ancestor, remember?” You honestly don’t. You always knew Karkat was Karkat, really. Though admittedly, as far as you can remember, you always knew what was hiding behind those impressive walls of grey. Vaguely, you can also recall discussing the differences between the cult of the Signless and the cult of the Sufferer with him, but they’re blurry memories that you can’t quite piece together except for the certainty that if there was anyone it was okay to talk about that stuff with, it had to be Karkat. “You _knew_ , you motherfucking piece of a blistering shit. And you never gave a fuck about it. You were a rightful bitch about the hemospectrum and landdwellers versus seadwellers and being a pompous, arrogant douche, and yet you never gave a single, solitary fuck about my blood.” 

“It just.” You laugh, a little hysterically, nuzzling the side of Karkat’s face. “It just never seemed like a big deal.” Karkat makes a sound like you’re hurting him, but when you try to pull away he digs in his claws into your back. “I mean, I was dumb. Okay. I’ve always been dumber than a dozen bricks, but it honestly never really mattered, Kar. You’re just. You.” 

He’s crying again, and you don’t know how to handle it. He’s still _inside_ you, and you can feel his bulge retreating slowly, and he’s clinging to you and bawling like a kid who lost his lusus. You pet his back and his hair and rub your cheek against his forehead, hoping desperately something will work and make him stop. When he’s quieted down enough that he only sobs every now and then, you try to slowly coax him off your lap. There’s a mess of slurry and lubrication between your legs and you know for a fact that shit _crusts_. You help him stand, and when you’re sure he’s not gonna fall the moment you let go of him, you peel yourself off the platform with a pitiful moan. Oh yes, he’s going to be bad for your back. 

“C’mon, you blubbering pansy, let’s get cleaned up.” 

He looks like he can’t decide if he wants to punch you or hug you, and you take the decision from his hands by pushing him gently towards the ablution block. He stumbles a little and you wonder if his knees feel anywhere near as jelly-like as yours. He holds onto the doorframe, stopping and looking up at you. You can tilt your head down, and the height difference is still all kinds of hilariously awkward. 

“You do realize,” he says, with a strange solemn expression that makes him actually look his age for a change, and coincidentally also makes you fall in love with him all over again, “that you’re never ever gonna get rid of me now?” 

“I think I can live with that,” you say, half smiling and nudging him forward. 

“I mean it,” he says, almost matter-of-factly, “you’re gonna work in my personal ship and I’m never ever gonna let you out of my sight again.” 

“I’ll take your threats all the more seriously when you don’t have my genetic material splattered all over your groin, Kar.” 

He laces his fingers with yours, holding your hand tight enough it almost hurts. 

“You’re done fucking up, right?” It’s a desperate plea for all it’s hopeful and almost teasing. 

You raise his hand, kiss his knuckles and refuse to lie. 

“I’m trying, love.” 

  


* * *

  


_When crooks laugh_  
_Oh, please, come to us with your lousy pride!_  
_When crooks laugh_  
_Think you're just almighty, what a disgrace!_  
_A regular ol' love song?_  
_Who the hell's gonna wanna hear that same crap again?_  
_Go ahead and search for the face of love_  
_But don'cha know what's gotta come first?_

~ Hatsune Miku, “When Crooks Laugh.” 

**Author's Note:**

> ...because I apparently can't write porn without plot? Sob.
> 
> I fucking love this verse and I'm not even sure why.


End file.
